Mohawk Fine Papers honors Pentagram designer with publication of book

Monday, February 19, 2007

Press release from the issuing company

[Cohoes, NY] — Since 1998, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut has worked in close collaboration with Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, designing more than 40 posters for open houses, conferences and public programs. Mohawk Fine Papers has published a book celebrating this collaboration: Forty Posters for the Yale School of Architecture.
As Bierut notes in the introduction, cultural institutions often build a profile through repetition and graphic consistency. But here, Bierut went in the opposite direction, insisting that every Yale poster use a different typeface: diversity, in this case, "could represent its own form of consistency."
“What you see between the covers of this book are 40 examples of Michael’s inspired handiwork…Michael is a great communicator with a superb sense of humor….” writes Robert A.M. Stern, Dean and Professor of Architecture at the Yale University School of Architecture.
“He is a genius for turning the familiar into something wholly new.” Stern calls what Bierut has done for the Yale School of Architecture “an amazing feat of reinvention….”
“When we heard that Michael Bierut would be receiving the AIGA Medal, we wanted to do something to honor our work together and all his efforts on behalf of AIGA and the design community. As we discussed possible projects the posters Michael had designed for the Yale School of Architecture intrigued me. It’s not often that a designer has the opportunity (or the fortitude) to solve the same problem over and over again for the same client with such inventive results,” says Laura Shore, SVP Communications.
Bierut calls his work for Yale a labor of love. “I'm so grateful to Mohawk for giving these temporary pieces a permanent home."
The AIGA Medal is the highest honor in the field of graphic design and is awarded by AIGA for exceptional achievements in graphic design and visual communication. “We are pleased to share this book -- the result of one more collaboration between Michael Bierut and Mohawk,” says Shore.
Mohawk is committing any profits from the sale of books to support the AIGA Winterhouse Awards for Design Writing & Criticism.
(http://www.aiga.org/writingawards). The book is distributed by Winterhouse Editions, and the price is $20.00 per copy. Ordering information at: http://winterhouse.com/editions or books@jhwd.com.